Presbyterian church grows to serve community
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com

The Rev. Dave Wilkinson came to Moorpark 20 years ago to establish a church. Launched by a group of six people, Moorpark Presbyterian Church today is home to about 460 members.

The congregation met at Chaparral Middle School until the current facility was built on Peach Hill Road in 1992. A new Sunday school wing was added in 2000.

Since Moorpark Presbyterian continues to grow, the church leadership has decided a larger facility dedicated for worship is now needed.

The 22,000-square-foot structure will also have a daylight basement that will be used for junior and high school programs. In addition, there will be some office area and rehearsal space for the church's drama and music program, Wilkinson said. The new $3.4 million facility won't replace the existing building.

Although membership is growing, Wilkinson said, he intends to maintain a church that has a sense of family. "That helps people to connect," he said.

Moorpark Presbyterian strives to help people understand and grow in their Christian faith.

"We want to be a place where people bring their Bibles and their brains," the pastor said.

Wilkinson, 57, graduated from college with a degree in journalism and teaching credentials. But when God called him to become a pastor, he attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

He began his career as an associate pastor in the Bay Area and was assigned to a small church in Northern California for seven years.

"The church grew successfully, so that experience led the (Presbyterian) committee to assign me to Moorpark," he said. In 1986, he was invited by the Presbytery of Santa Barbara to organize the new church in Moorpark.

The Presbyterian faith was started by theologian John Calvin, who refined the reformers' new way of thinking about the nature of God and God's relationship with humanity in what came to be known as Reformed theology, according to www.PCUSDA.org, the denomination's official site.

Calvin was a Frenchman who went to Geneva because of persecution in the 1500s. "That became the center for spreading the Protestant faith throughout Europe," Wilkinson said. Coincidentally, the local

church will soon be home to a new youth pastor who will come from Switzerland in January.

Wilkinson and his wife, Carol, met the youth pastor through the Internet. "We interviewed him in Interlaken," said Wilkinson, who went to Switzerland last year.

"Presbyterian" means a form of government that is republican, the pastor said.

"It was a form of government that was taken from the Switzerland Republic, which represents democracy. The Presbyterian Church elects its own leaders."

Local churches also get the support of a central organization based in Kentucky that approved the new structure, Wilkinson said. The organization provided a loan of $1.4 million toward the facility, he said.

Another $1 million will come from the Moorpark congregation, and the remainder will come from the sale of a 2.7 acre property that belonged to the church.

"We bought the land above the church in 2001 and realized, because of redesign work we've done, that we don't really need that property. So we sold it, and the profit is going toward the new building," Wilkinson said.

"We didn't buy it with the intention of selling it," he said. The land is zoned for institutional use, and it may be home to a medical urgent care center in the future, but nothing is finalized, the pastor said.

Sunday services at Moorpark Presbyterian are at 8:15 and 10:45 a.m., and Sunday school programs for both children and adults are scheduled between the services at 9:30 a.m..

This Sunday's sermon is "The Making and Unmaking of a Terrorist."

"It's about Apostle Paul and how he was really an enemy of the church, but Jesus changed him," Wilkinson said.

The church is at 13950 Peach Hill Road. For more information, visit www.moorparkpres.org.